In Reply to: Viva Mexico! What do you think of the red card against Balogun? posted by DSCBruin on July 05, 2026 at 13:19:08
As far as I know, incidental vs intentional is not a factor in the color of the card issued. It's based on wrecklessness of the action and its consequences.
For instance, you may gone after the ball to tackle an offensive player on an attack and trip him up. It's not a foul if your first contact was with the ball, it's a foul if it's with the player. Whether you intended to trip him up doesn't matter. If that was a good scoring opportunity for that player you get the red.
In one of the earlier games Messi's cleats also banged into a player's calf, and the reaction at the time was that he should've received a red card for that. So I guess American fans are getting in the spirit of the game by demanding their players get special treatment.
That said, I didn't see either the Bolagun incident or the Messi one live so I can only say so much about them.